Huawei Dr Wen Tong: Do 6G right rather than haste

On 17^th October 2024 in Japan, Dr Wen Tong, Huawei Wireless CTO, delivered a speech titled ‘6G needs to delivery new values for the market’ at CEATEC conference. Dr Wen Tong shared his views and understanding of 6G standardization directions and presented the innovations that would drive 6G standardization.

“6G should represent a true generational leap in technology, while its standards, technologies and network architectures should be redefined based on application scenarios and requirements from 2030 to 2040. The wireless industry should fully digest the disruptive and order-of-magnitude (OOM) change happening in the AI technologies, to enable a significant enhancement in generational capability and generate new values to consumers. Essentially, 6G is not merely an extension of 5G technologies, it is also not another way to implement 5G, but a distinct evolutionary step in communications, so to reshape the wireless industry and take it to the next height.”

Dr Wen Tong indicates that the ultimate objective of 6G development is to realize connected intelligence. In the era of 6G, the network design can be anchored in Level 3 intelligence, i.e. Agentic-AI, enabling AI systems to act autonomously on users’ behalf. The vision for 6G is for AI to permeate 90% of businesses, outperform 90% of human experts, and contribute to 90% of the economic output. With native AI integration in 6G, the capabilities of 6G will be ingrained within AI agents, thereby achieving the goal of a “network for AI”.

From Dr Wen Tong’s view, the key to embracing the AI revolution with a quantum leap is to redesign the 6G network architecture with AI from end to end.

• From the core side, the 6G network core should be an agentic-AI core (A-core), which should be operated without human intervention and be purely application-driven. This would empower operators with the autonomy and capability to innovate new services.
• From the RAN-side, Agentic-AI RAN (A-RAN) is a total Integration of the AI, Communications & Sensing for 6G New Radio. The integration depends on the distribution of the neural computing power at UE, Edge or Cloud, and this will be the future platform to deliver AI services.
• From the UE-side, the mobile industry is in the stage of providing multi-modal generative AI applications, embodied AI, and it is expected to introduce wearable AI glasses and humanoid robots.

UE is supposed to communicate with the superintelligence service in the cloud to become agentic-AI intelligence entity. In 6G era, the key to UEs lies in agentic-AI, which will enable four capabilities including sensing, reasoning, decision, and actions that have never been supported before.

“In the context of 3GPP standardization,” Dr. Wen Tong emphasized, “The integration of AI and communication is imperative for two key reasons: First, AI has the potential to enhance communication performance significantly. Second, the convergence of AI with communication & sensing will form the foundational platform for 6G.”

            At the end of the speech, Dr Wen Tong commented on the relationship between 5G and 6G networks, stating, “We should do 6G right, rather than do 6G fast. 6G should not merely be an extension of 5G, but rather, a new network architecture to unleash the full aspiration and imagination of the mobile industry and to foster innovation in the 6G era. In the next 5 years or more, 5G and 5G-Advanced will be sufficient to meet the requirements of current operators. To duplicate 5G technologies in 6G is not the best investment strategy for operators. We should not underestimate the capabilities of 5G-A and the potential of 6G.”